


solo yolo

by ailurea



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Alternate Reality, Alternate Universe - Roommates/Housemates, Friends to Lovers, Humor, M/M, Misunderstandings, Mutual Pining, idiots to lovers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-20
Updated: 2019-05-20
Packaged: 2020-03-08 07:11:43
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,420
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18889714
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ailurea/pseuds/ailurea
Summary: Shiro spends his nights “taking care” of himself, which is fine. Natural. Good for him.Keith, who’s desperately trying not to have inappropriate thoughts about his roommate and long-time crush, just wishes he could be quieter about it.





	solo yolo

**Author's Note:**

> inspired by an episode of kim's convenience.
> 
> all the love to the [heart hotel](https://heart-hotel.carrd.co/) for the support and encouragement, and special thanks to cai and faia for betaing! ♥

The walls of Keith and Shiro’s apartment are thin.

They knew this when they decided to move in, but Keith didn’t expect it to be an issue. He’s never lived in an apartment where he couldn’t hear his neighbor sneeze. The noises of someone else living their lives never really bothered him—it was actually kind of reassuring, in a way—and he couldn’t imagine spending hundreds of dollars more in rent per month just for silence.

He’s starting to regret it now.

There are some sounds that Keith is surprised to encounter in his life—and not because he’s trying to avoid them or anything. Just that he never thought his life trajectory would put him on the same path as that sound. For example, the peacocks screaming at him and nearly making him shit his pants as he took a jog around the neighborhood, back when he was an intern at JPL. Or Lotor bursting into a surprisingly good rendition of _I Will Always Love You_ after getting really fucking wasted the night the Sincline launched successfully.

And now, the new top of the list: Shiro, moaning in pleasure on the other side of the wall connecting their bedrooms.

It’s not unpleasant. But it does leave Keith sitting in his room with a moral conflict raging through his head. Both heads.

There’s no way in hell he’s going to interrupt Shiro by knocking on his door and asking him to please turn it down. He could knock on the wall, maybe, and avoid the face-to-face intrusiveness of it all, but there would still be plenty of embarrassment involved.

He doesn’t want to do that to Shiro.

Shiro is a man, who has needs, and it’s not his fault that he’s loud about fulfilling them. Not everyone possesses Keith’s skill of silent orgasms perfected after years of shitty cellophane-thin apartment walls. And besides that, there’s no way Shiro can know how this affects Keith—how Keith’s been pining after him since the first time he saw Shiro smile, and how Shiro and sex in the same sentence make him blush helplessly.

Shiro isn’t doing this on purpose. Shiro is just having a good time, in the privacy of his bedroom, without realizing that it’s not nearly as private as he thinks.

There are pictures in his mind now, of Shiro’s back arched and head tilted up in pleasure, a hand wrapped around himself as he works himself to the edge of pleasure and over. Keith squeezes his eyes shut, but the image only gets more vivid. So he opens his eyes, stares at the ceiling, plasters his hands to the sheets at his sides, and focuses on finding constellations on the moonlit stucco while ignoring the NC-17 images trying to push their way to the surface.

It takes an agonizing fifteen minutes—and seriously, what kind of masturbation stamina does Shiro even have?—but eventually, the noises die down, and Keith can breathe again.

He rolls onto his side, tucking his hands under the pillow so that they don’t drift anywhere they shouldn’t.

All of his barely-restrained feelings are coming to the surface, and he quashes them back down. He’s been living with Shiro for three years now without cracking. This single incident isn’t going to ruin him.

* * *

It might actually ruin him.

The single incident is not a single incident. It’s a regular thing. God, is it a regular thing.

It happens every other day, like clockwork. He and Shiro eat dinner together, then spend some time in the living room on their computers or watching Netflix before they take their turns in the bathroom. Keith typically washes up first, then heads to bed and tries to sleep before Shiro finishes up. Usually, he fails—Shiro’s freakishly efficient in the bathroom despite his skin care routine—and then it happens:

From the wall separating his and Shiro’s bedroom comes the quiet, pleasured sounds spilling from Shiro’s lips.

It’s obvious Shiro’s trying to be quiet about it. It’s a little hushed, not shamelessly loud, and none of them are drawn-out or anything. They’re just little noises, like it feels so good he can’t help himself. He probably doesn’t think Keith can hear him at all.

Keith is going to die.

He’s tried to silence the sounds out of respect for Shiro’s privacy. He’s nearly smothered himself with a pillow at least five nights by now. He’s contemplated earplugs, but then he knows he’ll never hear his alarm in the morning.

And it’s not like he can ask Shiro to stop _now_. The window for that passed the first time he jerked off guiltily in the shower, mind filled with memories of a soundtrack that had only existed in fantasy before.

He can’t admit that he’s been enjoying this torture for so long. And he shouldn’t even be thinking about Shiro like this at all. He’d thought he’d buried these feelings the same time he’d burned all the pages containing the scrawl _Keith Shirogane_. Shiro needs a trusted friend and colleague, not a boy with a puppy crush.

But knowing that doesn’t make it any easier to let these feelings go.

* * *

“You look like shit,” Lance says when Keith stumbles into work after a long two weeks of erection hell.

Keith takes the coffee from Lance’s hand and guzzles it all in one endless waterfall down his throat, ignoring Lance’s indignant squawking. It’s too sugary, but all he cares about is the raw caffeine thrumming through his veins. “Where’s the test card?”

“No way are you flying, not until you tell me what crawled up your ass and died.” Lance snatches the cup back and squints at the dregs. “The leaves say it has to do with Shiro.”

“What leaves?” Keith says.

“So that’s a yes to the Shiro?”

“Fuck off.”

“Do I want to know?” Shiro says from right behind him, and Keith nearly jumps out of his skin as he whips around.

“Sorry, buddy, didn’t mean to scare you.” Shiro puts a huge, warm hand on Keith’s shoulder and smiles in a way that means he’s laughing on the inside. Keith is too aware of his hand, and the heat coming off it, and what other things it’s been wrapped around.

That’s another thing—since this all started, he’s had a really inappropriate fixation on Shiro’s hand. And also his mouth. And also any and all of the noises he makes during their day-to-day. There’s a lot of Shiro to fixate on. It’s really not good.

“Keith,” Shiro says.

While Keith was having a crisis and zoning out while staring at Shiro’s mouth, Shiro was apparently still talking. He stares at Shiro’s forelock instead. He heard somewhere that it’s a close enough approximation to looking into someone’s eyes that they generally don’t notice. “Sorry, what was the last thing you said?”

Shiro just shakes his head. “I was just saying that Allura sent over some more details about the Black Lion. We should figure out as much as we can before it comes in. You have some time this afternoon to go over it?”

“Uh, yeah, that’s fine,” Keith says. It comes out croaky, which Shiro, being a normal person, will definitely attribute to sleepiness and not sexual frustration.

“Great.” Shiro tilts his head. “You sure you’re okay? You seem tired.”

“M’fine,” Keith says. “Just, you know…”

Shiro watches him, waiting for the rest of his sentence. He’s got wide, innocent eyes. Like a doe. Innocent lips, too. Keith wants to kiss him.

“...you know,” Keith finishes lamely.

There’s a second where Shiro just watches him, then Shiro says, “Right. You also forgot your lunch in the car.” In his other hand he holds up a bento box wrapped in a blue cloth, smiling cartoon rabbits decorating the cotton.

Keith winces as he takes it. At least he didn’t leave it at home. “Sorry. Thanks, Shiro. I’ll catch you after lunch?”

“Yep, enjoy your food! I put in a special surprise for you,” Shiro says with a wink. “See you, Lance.”

Lance looks between Keith and Shiro’s departing form, pity dripping from every facet of his being. Once Shiro’s out of earshot, Lance looks Keith right in the eyes and says, “Uh-huh.”

Keith bristles and hugs the bento box to his chest. “What does that even mean?”

“It means _uh-huh_ ,” Pidge says, dropping a stack of manila folders as thick as her arm onto the plastic table Keith calls his desk.

Lance points finger guns at her. “She gets me.”

Hunk leans on Pidge’s shoulder. “I think everyone gets you, _buddy_ ,” he says, placing a strange emphasis on the word. Some kind of inside joke, Keith’s guessing. They have a lot.

Keith is already so sexually frustrated he wants to die. There’s only so much more frustration he can handle. “I don’t get you,” he says.

“Shiro is, like, way smart,” Hunk says, “but he can be kind of oblivious sometimes. I don’t think he’s doing it on purpose.”

Cold sweat breaks out on the back of Keith’s neck. He’s glad Lance has the coffee cup; he would’ve crushed the ceramic in his clenched fist if he was still holding it. “Doing what?”

“You know,” Pidge says. He can hear the eyebrow waggle in her voice.

All conversation stalls for a moment as the deafening roar of a jet taking off echoes throughout the hangar—which is good, because Keith’s brain has also stalled. They can’t be talking about The Shiro Problem, can they? There’s no way.

“Come on, don’t make us say it,” Lance says once the noise dies down. “We all know, okay? And it’s obviously majorly bothering you.”

Hunk looks on pityingly. “Yeah, dude, it’s kind of been going on for a while now? We didn’t say anything before because it’s kind of not our business, but—”

“I get it,” Keith says, and he does get that it’s starting to impact his work, but—“What I don’t get is how you all know this.”

Where exactly does it say on his face that he wants Shiro to stop masturbating so loudly when he’s trying to sleep the room over? How the hell is that something that people can infer from the bags under his eyes?

“You remember getting super drunk on Saturday?” Lance says.

Keith remembers getting drunk. Keith doesn’t remember anything he said while drunk.

He collapses into a chair. “Fuck.”

Hunk pats his shoulder. “There, there. Shiro’s a good guy, you know? You guys just need to talk it out.”

“Yeah, I know,” Keith says.

In two weeks, he and Shiro are going to be trapped in a tiny cockpit together, co-piloting the Black Lion for the first time, and he needs to be well-rested and erection-free for it to go well. And it needs to go well. It’s their only chance to prove that they’re ready to take on the exploration mission.

The conversation needs to happen. He’s just been avoiding the inevitable.

“Don’t worry, dude,” Pidge says. “You guys are, like, practically married. And we know Shiro. Trust me, this conversation’s not going to go nearly as badly as you think it will.”

“Yeah,” Keith says. “I hope so.”

* * *

Keith broaches the conversation with Shiro in their living room that night before he starts getting ready for bed.

He’s practiced it mentally hundreds of times, but now, on the spot, it’s coming out all stilted and awkward. Pidge’s voice is in his head, telling him _practicing in your head is not the same as practicing out loud_ , but it’s too late, Pidge. He bit the bullet and now he’s eating shrapnel.

“I know you have to… take care of yourself every night,” he says, with great delicacy. “And that’s… I get it. But, if you could do it when I’m not around, I’d really appreciate it.”

That was polite enough, right?

He’s run through hundreds of simulations of this conversation in his mind. Not in a single one of them did Shiro make this expression—a little crease of his brows, a little droop of the corners of his mouth, a little tuck of his shoulders to shield himself from the hurt. That’s what this expression is—a kind of blindsided hurt, like he didn’t expect this coming from Keith.

“Oh,” Shiro says. “I’m sorry. I—I didn’t realize it bothered you so much.”

Now Keith feels like shit, even though he’s also sure that his concern and his request were perfectly reasonable.

“It’s not that it bothers me,” he says, even though it kind of does. “It just… makes me a little uncomfortable?” That’s the safest alternative he can think of to saying _it makes me want to go to your bedroom and do really inappropriate things to you that would ruin our decade-long friendship_.

“I see,” Shiro says. His expression is far too bland for Keith’s liking. “I’m sorry, of course I don’t mean to make you uncomfortable. I’ll make sure you’re not around, okay?”

“Yeah, that’s. That’d be good. Thanks. I’m gonna—” Keith jerks his head in the direction of the bathroom and runs off, feeling like an asshole the entire time.

He hates it when Shiro’s upset. Hates it even more when he’s the cause.

He turns his face up into their high-pressure showerhead and lets the hot stream pelt his face and bury his misery. Shiro will get over it, he knows. At least he can convince himself that this is best for their relationship in the long run.

* * *

Pidge corners him at his desk a few days later. “What the hell happened with you and Shiro?”

Keith’s busy taking down notes from his test flight in her new stealth fighter, so he feels justified in completely ignoring her for the time it takes for him to finish scrawling out his initial thoughts.

Pidge taps her foot but doesn’t rush him.

He pushes his chair back when he’s finished. “I talked to him like you guys told me to.”

Pidge frowns at him. “Are you sure? Because you’re still cranky, and Shiro’s all gloomy now.”

“What?” Keith says. “Shiro isn’t—he’s not _gloomy_.”

He has seemed a little dimmer the last couple days, which Keith still hates himself for and will not stop hating himself for. But he wouldn’t call that gloomy.

“He poured orange juice in his coffee because he was too busy acting like Eeyore to notice it wasn’t creamer,” Pidge says. “And then he drank it.”

Keith’s head spins, trying to parse the sentence. “He’s acting like Ezor?”

“Eeyore,” Pidge says, then she sighs. “Childhood pop culture. Gloomy old donkey from Winnie the Pooh.”

“Right,” Keith says, and makes a note to look up _Winny the Poo_ later. Kid content is weird. “And you think Shiro is being… a gloomy old donkey.” Fuck, if that’s the case, then he really messed it up.

“How’d your talk go?” Pidge says.

Keith fiddles with his pen. “I don’t know. I don’t think he took it well. It was really fucking awkward.”

“Oh.” Pidge visibly deflates. “Oh, shit.” She wraps her arms around his shoulders, and Keith accepts the comfort, even though he feels like Shiro’s probably the one who needs it more right now. “Sorry, Keith. I really thought—it doesn’t matter. You wanna go out tonight?”

He hesitates. He kind of feels like he should talk to Shiro again, clear things up. But then again, maybe space is just what Shiro needs.

Things have been quiet in Shiro’s room the past few nights. Maybe Keith’s request for Shiro to do it when Keith wasn’t around wasn’t fair. They live together, they work together, they carpool together—Keith is around most of the time Shiro is. Shiro’s probably getting really pent up by now.

Yeah. He’s being an unfair roommate. It’s not like Keith doesn’t jerk off in bed when Shiro’s the room over. It’s not like he doesn’t fantasize about being loud so Shiro will hear him and come join him. The difference is that he can be, and is, quiet.

But just because Shiro can’t be doesn’t mean he shouldn’t be able to enjoy himself in the comfort of his own home, and his own bed. The best thing he can do is give Shiro the time and space to do it.

“Okay,” he says. “Let’s go. But we are not drinking.”

He can’t trust drunk!Keith to keep a secret, apparently.

“We’ll have some good PG-13 fun,” Pidge assures him. She pauses for a moment, and when he motions for her to go on, she blurts, “Are you still good to fly Black with him?”

Keith waves her off. “It’s awkward for now, but we’ll be fine. It’s not like we’re not friends anymore or anything.”

“Cool, yeah, just wanted to make sure,” Pidge says. She pats his shoulder. “Don’t worry. Shiro’ll come around.”

Keith really, really hopes so.

* * *

The complete silence on the topic between him and Shiro drags on. Keith comes close to mentioning it more than a few times, but every time he’s paralyzed by the thought of making it worse. In the end, he decides to leave it be and hopes that the whole incident fades naturally so that he never has to think about it again.

The damage to his psyche has already been done, in any case. Every time he’s in Shiro’s company now he feels like he has an 80% chance of springing an inappropriate boner and a 10% chance (and growing) of just giving in and doing something he’d probably regret.

In the end, it’s Shiro who brings it up.

It’s Wednesday evening, and they’re wrapping up their nightly episode of _Planet Earth_ on Netflix. Shiro’s sitting up, leaning against the armrest so that he can snack on pita chips. Keith’s tired after work and enjoys maximizing his time being horizontal at home, so he’s stretched out sideways across the couch, head in Shiro’s lap.

Shiro turns off the TV, rests his hand on Keith’s head, and says, “Hey, sorry, I’ve been trying to make time at the base so I wouldn’t have to do it at home, but we’ve just been so busy and—”

Keith holds up a hand to stop him. He will not flush at the thought of Shiro with his pants down and his legs spread in his office chair, or in the bathroom, or anywhere else at the Garrison. He will not even let the mere suggestion of these things enter his mind. He will not. He is not.

Keith sits up. He can’t have this conversation with his head so close to Shiro’s crotch.

“Look, I’ve been thinking… and that was a selfish thing for me to ask from you,” he says. “I’m sorry. This is your home too. You can do it whenever you want. It’s not any of my business.”

Shiro doesn’t look like he believes him. “But if it makes you uncomfortable—”

“It’s just that it’s—” Keith swallows hard and musters up the strength to talk about this like the grown adult that he is. “The noises are just kind of loud, sometimes?”

_The noises_ , Shiro mouths, then he says, “Oh, you mean the vibrations?”

Oh god, are there vibrations involved? He shouldn’t be surprised, not with the sounds that Shiro was making, but Keith’s not going to survive this conversation if Shiro starts elaborating in any way whatsoever. He curses Shiro’s unflappable expression.

“You should have said that was what was bothering you,” Shiro says. “I thought you had some kind of—well, nevermind, it really doesn’t make sense now that I think about it.” He laughs it off. “I’ll use a lower setting if you’re around, okay?”

Since when has Shiro been so shameless?!

Keith closes his mouth and clears his throat. “Great,” he says. “Good talk. Uh. Have fun.”

He barely refrains from slapping himself.

Shiro just laughs again. “I will. See you in a bit.”

Keith puts on his headphones and turns the volume up as high as it will go, letting the soothing sounds of Hunk’s Acoustic Good Times playlist fill his ears. Ignore, ignore, ignore, ignore, ignore.

Shiro’s voice breaks through the barrier of sound.

Keith runs away.

* * *

“What do you think?” Lance says. “He still alive?”

Skinny fingers prod Keith’s neck. Keith grunts and doesn’t move his face from where it’s planted against the table. The cold, white plastic of the tabletop is his best friend now, he decides. It doesn’t try to get him to talk. It doesn’t jerk off in front of him.

“Aw, give him some time,” Hunk says. “He’s got a lot to deal with right now.”

“Yeah, lay off, Lance,” Pidge says.

Lance does not lay off. Lance nudges him harder. “What’d you do, trade your soul for Shiro’s or something?” Lance says. “You’re like a zombie, dude. Keep this up and there’s no way they’re gonna let you in Black on Monday.”

“Fuck off,” Keith grumbles. Just because he’s dead doesn’t mean he won’t be able to fly the Black Lion. The two aren’t mutually exclusive.

“What is going on here?” Allura says from somewhere behind him. “Keith, are you all right?”

Keith telepathically asks the table to please swallow him alive. The table doesn’t respond.

“Hey, Princess!” Lance says as he thumps Keith on the back. “Nothing to worry about, Mullet just had The Talk with Shiro and, well. Yeah.”

Keith whips his head up. “What the fuck, Lance.” Allura doesn’t need to know about his personal problems. He’s going to lose all of his credibility in one goddamn day.

Allura doesn’t seem bothered. “I see,” she says, studying Keith’s expression. “You know, Shiro has sought my advice regarding this matter. I regret to say that I did not fully comprehend the depth of your emotions when I gave him my counsel. I will, of course, seek to clarify the situation at once.”

“Please don’t,” Keith says weakly. He can’t believe Shiro’s talked to the _Princess of Altea_ about this. The man really has no shame. Keith can’t decide if his respect for Shiro has grown or diminished since this started. “Just—I’ll talk to him again this weekend, all right? We’ll work it out. We really don’t need everyone getting involved.”

“It is pretty personal,” Pidge says, and stomps on Lance’s foot when he opens his mouth. “We’re just worried about you, Keith. And your relationship with Shiro. I mean, the two of you are like hashtag relationship goals. It feels really weird seeing this come between you guys, that’s all.”

“It’s not coming between us,” Keith says, and that, at least, he can be sure of. Even though he’s not sure what _hashtag relationship goals_ means in this context. Or any context.

“Listen, man, I don’t want to get stuck in space with Griffin,” Lance says.

“You won’t,” Keith says. “We’ll be fine by Monday. Promise.”

* * *

Saturday afternoon is the worst.

It’s unbearably hot outside, so they’ve spent the morning indoors. Shiro retreats to his bedroom after lunch, and Keith doesn’t pay it any mind, distracted by an article about the biological evolution of space mice on the International Space Station.

Then the noises start.

And Keith’s starting to think Shiro is personally out to get him.

The door must be open this time, because even though Shiro said he was going to use a lower setting, Keith can now hear the vibrations clear as day, and Shiro’s soft, muffled sounds layered over them. It’s molten lava, poured directly into his gut. He curls up on the couch and keeps his hands far, far away from his dick.

There are many boundaries between a man and his crush-turned-roommate. Jacking off to the live concert of your roommate jacking off is near the top of the list, if not the top.

Keith’s never been one to come completely untouched, but this moment is really fucking testing him.

An agonizing fifteen minutes later—and it’s always fifteen minutes because Shiro is a damn consistent masturbater—he hears Shiro go to the bathroom, and then he’s heading towards the kitchen, a bright smile on his face. “How’s that article?”

Shiro is being totally casual about the fact that he just jerked off with the door open while Keith was one room away. Yeah. That’s fine. This is fine. Keith can be casual, too.

“Good,” he says, and then, because he never learned to socialize, he adds, “Had a good time in there?”

Shiro takes a long drink from his water bottle, and Keith gets twice as hard from watching the way his Adam’s apple bobs as he swallows. He plops down on the couch, slinging an arm around the back of the couch behind Keith. “I did. I always get so thirsty afterward, though.”

“Right,” Keith says. He’s thirsty too.

Shiro studies his face for a moment, then says carefully, “I don’t know why it makes you feel bad, but… if you wanted to give it a try, I could help you out.”

“Help me out,” Keith repeats.

Shiro nods. “It really is good for you. Helps relieve stress and tension. Sam suggested I try it more regularly when he caught me pulling too many long nights.”

“Sam,” Keith says. “Sam Holt?”

“Mmhm.” Shiro’s distracted drinking from his bottle again, which is good because that means he’s missing the way that Keith is having a heart attack.

“Are you sure you don’t mean Matt?” Keith says.

Shiro laughs. “Nah, Matt’s got N7 to help him out. I mean, I guess Sam has Colleen, but apparently, she’s not really good at it.”

Holy shit. Holy shit Keith cannot believe the conversation they’re having right now. His fingers are white on the pillows, and he is one sentence away from tearing them to shreds.

Shiro takes another drink. “What do you think? You wanna try? We can start gentle.”

“Gentle.” Keith feels like a parrot, dumbly repeating everything Shiro says. He’s not really sure what else to do. His brain feels like molasses. He will happily agree to anything Shiro says, but he also has no idea what the fuck is happening anymore.

Shiro is, apparently, some kind of shameless sexual deviant who gets masturbation advice from Princess Allura of Altea and Sam Holt. And now he wants to pass those tips on to Keith. Via practical demonstration.

“Only if you’re comfortable,” Shiro says.

Keith has a dilemma right now. Should he go for the one-night mutual masturbation with his roommate that he’s hopelessly in love with or not? Ugh, he doesn’t know why he’s even pretending to mull it over; if it’s a chance to be close to Shiro, there’s only one real answer.

“Okay,” he says. “Let’s… let’s do it.”

Shiro beams. “Cool. I’ll help you out. It’ll feel amazing, I promise. I’ve had a lot of practice.”

Keith chokes on his saliva and disguises it as a cough. “That’s… awesome. Looking forward to it.” This is the most transactional sex conversation he’s ever had. “Should we do it in your room? Or mine?”

“You’ll probably be more comfortable on a bed,” Shiro says, standing. “And in your own space. Let me grab the stuff and meet you in your room?”

Shiro is definitely secretly a casual sex fiend. It’s the only explanation for why he can propose this without any change to his demeanor whatsoever. Why he can refer to his sex apparatus as _the stuff_.

Keith goes to his room on autopilot and sits down at the edge of the bed. Should he strip? Would that be too presumptuous? Maybe Shiro’s just going to stick a hand down his pants and have that be the end of it?

“Do you have lotion in there?” Shiro calls out from the hallway. “Just in case you want me to use my hands.”

Jesus.

Keith lifts the bottle of lotion from his nightstand. Still half full. “Yeah,” he calls back out.

“Cool, be there in a sec!”

Keith panics and contemplates his clothing again. After a moment, he tears himself out of his shirt. There. That seems like a reasonable compromise.

He doesn’t notice Shiro’s return until he’s already stepping through the doorway, holding a massive vibrator wand in his hand.

“What the fuck is that,” Keith says. When he’d heard the vibrations, he’d pictured a dildo or something, not this monstrosity. Keith’s never contemplated using a vibrator on himself, and this one, in particular, is just generally obscene. It’s silver and huge, skinny on one end and as wide as Shiro’s head on the other. There are what looks like two big rubber balls mounted on the wide end.

Shiro looks at it. “Uh, it’s a massager?”

“And you put that on your dick?”

“What? No! Why would I put it on my—” Shiro cuts himself off, looking between the massager and at Keith, shirtless on the bed with his hands folded across his lap.

Ice settles in Keith’s gut, and he can tell that Shiro understands at the same time as Keith that a disaster has just occurred.

Shiro flushes. “Oh my god. I don’t—I think we’re having two very different conversations here.”

“Yep.” Keith grabs his shirt from the bed and makes a break for it, but Shiro’s too quick. He slings an arm around Keith’s midsection, and Keith bounces back to the mattress.

“Wait,” Shiro says. “Can we talk about it?”

“No.” Keith abandons his shirt and turns over so that he can bury his face in the pillows. His face must be flaming. “Let me die.”

Shiro laughs breathlessly. His weight sinks into the mattress, and Keith becomes uncomfortably aware of the heat radiating off Shiro and onto Keith’s bare side. He wrestles blindly with the comforter, trying to get it out from under him and Shiro’s combined weights.

In the end it’s Shiro who saves him, standing up and rolling Keith over to free the blanket, then pulling it over Keith’s body and up to his neck. “Better?”

Keith grunts. He’s half-naked and half-hard and half-dead, and Shiro’s hand on his shoulder is half-comforting and half-agonizing, but at least he’s shielded from Shiro’s gaze now.

“I’ll leave you alone if you want me to,” Shiro says. “But I really think we should talk about this.”

Keith knows they should talk about it—but knowing is much, much different from wanting. He pulls the covers tighter around himself. “Okay. Talk.”

Shiro’s thumb strokes over his shoulder, hard enough that Keith can feel it through the blankets. “A few weeks ago, I started complaining about soreness around my neck and shoulders. Sam got the same thing after years of sitting in front of consoles, and he suggested using a massager. The OT agreed, so I started doing self-massage for fifteen minutes a few times a week.”

Keith lets out an endless, pained groan into the pillow. Of course Shiro’s not a sexual deviant. Why the hell had he jumped to that conclusion? Now he’s shirtless and dying of embarrassment and it’s all his own goddamn fault.

Shiro waits for him to finish, like a gentleman, but he is not enough of a gentleman to end the conversation there. He says, “I’m guessing what happened next is that you assumed I was doing something else. Like… uh.”

God, he can’t even say it.

“Masturbating,” Keith says, muffled by fluff and cotton.

“I can’t hear you with your face in the pillow.”

Keith unburies his face to look at him, but he can’t actually hold Shiro’s gaze for longer than a few seconds, so he stares at the wall instead. “I thought you were jerking off. Really loudly. For a month.”

Shiro blushes again. “Right, that. And—sorry, it’s my fault for not realizing we had our wires crossed. I should’ve realized it was strange for you to feel so uncomfortable with the idea of self-massage, but, you know. I never want to assume anything.”

“It’s fine,” Keith says. He flops over onto his back, but keeps the covers pulled up to his chin. “I should’ve realized something was up when Allura said she’d talked to you about it. I just thought you got super freaky at some point and I never realized.”

Shiro coughs. “Yeah, that would—that would definitely be awkward. So, um, today. When I offered to help you—”

“Nope,” Keith says, and uses his foot to push Shiro off the mattress. “Conversation over. Good night.”

“It’s 3pm.” Shiro’s voice is exasperated but fond. “Keith. Come on.” He kneels down by the bed and puts his arms near Keith’s head. “What exactly were you about to let me do to you?”

“Oh my god,” Keith says faintly. “You can’t even say the word _masturbate_ , now you want me to tell you this?”

“Fair,” Shiro says. “I mean… were we about to have sex?”

“No,” Keith says. “You were about to massage me with your giant thing.”

“I could still massage you with my giant thing.” There’s something suggestive in Shiro’s tone.

Keith frowns at him for it. “I can’t tell if you’re trying to make an innuendo or not, and I’m too tired to try to figure it out.”

“Would you have liked it to be an innuendo?”

“Don’t ask things you already know the answer to.”

Shiro sighs and sits back on his heels. “I’m not sure I know the answer, though. I mean, I used to, back when we were students—”

Keith groans. “Was I that obvious?”

“The _Mr. Keith Shirogane_ on your study guides kind of gave it away, yeah,” Shiro says, very very dryly.

Keith wants to go back into the past and murder himself. He pulls the pillow out from under his head so that he can suffocate himself with it.

Shiro wrestles it from him. “No dying.”

“Ugh,” Keith says. With feeling.

“Keith,” Shiro says, softly. “I like what we have now. But it’s been hard for me to tell if you want anything more.”

Keith’s heart is sinking. “I like what we have now, too.”

Shiro waits, and when Keith doesn’t say anything else, he adds, “For the record, I do want more with you.”

Keith’s weary mind insists that the words coming out of Shiro’s mouth don’t make any sense. He must be tired if he’s daydreaming in the middle of a conversation. Especially if he’s daydreaming about Shiro confessing to him.

“Keith?”

Keith blinks. “Sorry, I spaced out for a sec.”

Shiro is looking on with more patience than Keith deserves. “You with me now?”

“Yeah.” At least fifty percent of him is, which is good enough. “What were you saying?”

“I want more,” Shiro says. “I love you, Keith. As a friend, a brother. And more. And if I knew you wanted to sleep with me, I would’ve done it ages ago.”

“Um,” Keith says. “What?”

Shiro’s head twitches like he wants to roll his eyes, but he sighs instead. “Are you really going to make me say it a third time?”

“What the fuck, Shiro?” Keith’s head is spinning, overburdened with trying to analyze millions of interactions and conversations and physical touches. “Years? Couldn’t you have said something?”

“I didn’t think you felt the same anymore!” Shiro says. “Or, at least, not in the romantic sense. You know, I fall in love the same time you fall out of it? I’ve kind of been preparing for you to bring someone else home.”

“I wouldn’t!” Keith says. He can’t even think about that. “Do you—” He takes a deep breath. “Do you have any idea how long I’ve been in love with you?”

“Uh,” Shiro says. “When I was your TA for flight systems?”

“When you were flying the ATLAS sim for the first time at the Galaxy Expo,” Keith says. “You were the best pilot I’d ever seen. And then you came out and spoke and—it was one of those times, you know? I couldn’t decide if I wanted to be you or fuck you.”

“That was before we met,” Shiro says, studying him carefully. “You’re saying your feelings haven’t changed this entire time?”

“I am very good at compartmentalizing,” Keith says. “You were the nicest person I’d ever met. I didn’t want to screw it up when we became friends, so I just tried to forget about it.”

“Oh,” Shiro says, and blinks at Keith with his doe eyes.

Keith sighs. “Yeah.”

“So then these three weeks for you were kind of… really bad, I’m guessing,” Shiro says. “Or really good, maybe?”

Keith glares at him. “Have you ever had a pining, guilty boner, Shiro? They’re not fun.”

Shiro laughs and puts his hands up in surrender. “Okay, okay. Sorry. Really bad, then.” He lowers his hands. “So… what now? Did you still want to do something?”

Shame and embarrassment have long deflated Keith’s boner. Now he just feels tired, and a bit cold. “I don’t know. Just cuddle, maybe?”

Shiro doesn’t hesitate; he sits back and pulls off his shirt. Then he stands and raps his knuckles against the comforter at Keith’s shoulder. “Knock knock.”

Keith snorts and lifts up the corner of the blanket. “You’re ridiculous.”

“You love me,” Shiro says as he snuggles in, curving himself around Keith’s body.

He is really, really warm against Keith’s side, and Keith lets out a soft sound of relief before he can stop himself.

Shiro snorts. “Who’s making noise now?”

“Shut up,” Keith says, and swallows. Takes in a deep breath. “Shiro.”

“Mm?”

“I love you.”

Shiro smiles and rests his hand against Keith’s heart. “I love you, too.”

Keith breathes, and smiles back.

It’s the simplest thing that’s ever happened to him.

* * *

When he and Shiro arrive at the Garrison on Monday, Shiro kisses him by the car before they go their separate ways. It’s a quick kiss, and Shiro’s trying to be sneaky about it, but there’s only so much you can be sneaky in a parking lot in broad daylight.

When Keith gets over to his shitty plastic desk in the hangar, Lance is there, leaning back in his chair with his feet propped up on the table.

“Well, well, well, whaddya know,” Lance says. “Mullet actually had the conversation, after all.”

Keith contemplates kicking the chair legs out from under him.

“Oi, Lance,” Pidge says. She nods her head towards Lance. “Normally I’d tell you to have a field day, but we kind of need him today.” She pauses long enough for him to make a noise of acknowledgment, then turns to Keith and says, “So… about you and Shiro.”

Lance swings his feet off the table. The legs of his chair thud to the floor in protest. “Come on, seriously?”

“Hey, I’m not giving him a hard time or anything,” Pidge says, adjusting her glasses. “I just wanna know what happened. You both seem more than good now.”

Keith really, really doesn’t want to admit anything. But his team already knows about everything—thanks, drunk past self—so he should probably clear up this misunderstanding as well.

“Wait, Hunk should be here for this too,” Lance says, then yells “Hunk!” across the hangar.

Hunk looks over, then says something to the intern he’s talking to before he hustles to the table, checking his tablet the whole way over. “This better be important. I have so many things to check before Iverson gets here.”

“Keith’s about to dish on him and Shiro,” Lance says.

“Oh.” Hunk sets the tablet on the table and sits down next to Lance. “Go on.”

“How are you guys so fucking nosy,” Keith says.

“That’s what friends are for,” Pidge says, pulling out the chair on the other side of Lance. She starts banging her fists on the table. “Deets, deets, deets, deets.”

Lance and Hunk join in the banging and chanting. The worst part is that no one’s even stopping to stare.

“Okay, okay, stop,” Keith says, and waits until they quiet down before saying as fast as he can, “I’m only telling you this because I don’t want you guys asking Shiro weird things later. Remember when I was drunk and I told you about how Shiro’s loud when he’s jerking off?”

“What?” Lance screeches, drawing back and throwing his hands over his mouth.

Pidge stares wordlessly at Keith.

Oh, fucking hell.

Hunk clears his throat. “Yeah, um. You see, what happened was, you got really drunk, and then Lance, being Lance, asked if you thought Shiro was hot. And then you kinda talked about how hot Shiro was for maybe two—”

“Three,” Lance says.

“And a half,” Pidge adds.

“For three and a half hours,” Hunk amends. “While also confessing your undying love and devotion, like how if Shiro fell off a cliff you’d jump after him to catch him. I tried to tell you you’d just both be dead, but I think you were too drunk for logic at that point.”

“I’d jump off a cliff to catch him,” Keith says. It’s Shiro.

Hunk stares at him for a moment. “Right. Well, anyways. That was pretty much the conversation. Shiro’s, uh, solo habits didn’t come up.”

Keith’s getting a headache. “What were you guys trying to get me to talk about, then?”

“Wait,” Lance says. “Wait wait wait wait wait wait. Does this mean Shiro really was jerking off really loudly?”

“We’re done talking about that,” Keith says. “I never said it.”

“Oh no you don’t!” Lance says. “Are you telling me, that when we told you to go confess your undying love for Shiro to his bro-zoning face, you went and told him to stop jerking off so loudly?”

Keith grits his teeth. “For the record, he was not jerking it.”

“Uh-huh,” Pidge says. “What was he doing, then?”

He glares. Wasn’t she supposed to be on his side? “None of your business.”

“Yeah, I’m not hearing anything to convince me he wasn’t diddling his doo,” Lance says.

“No one was diddling anything, and especially not their doo!”

“Oh my,” Allura says from behind Keith. Her tone is shocked, but when he turns to look at her, she’s hiding a laugh behind her hand.

He glares around the semi-circle they’ve made. “I hate all of you.” He turns and leaves.

“Wait, come back!” Pidge calls out. “I want the full story!”

“We’re done!” Keith calls back, and makes his way out of the hangar and to the building where Shiro’s office is.

The door’s ajar, so he lets himself in without knocking. Shiro’s clicking away at his computer, frowning at something on the screen. When Keith comes in, Shiro looks over at him, frowns, then checks his monitor again. “I thought we weren’t meeting for another half hour?”

“Yeah, the team’s just being—” Keith waves his arm vaguely.

There’s no way to fully encapsulate the absurdity that is the Voltron team, but Shiro’s been in their general circle and has also heard Keith’s stories for years. His lips quirk up in understanding. “Ah.”

“If this test flight goes well, you’re signing up for at least three years stuck in space with us,” Keith says. “You sure you’re ready for it?”

Shiro stands up and rounds his desk so that he’s standing inches away. “I think I can handle it.” He hooks his fingers into Keith’s belt loops and tugs him over the last few inches until their bodies are touching. “Especially if you’re there with me.”

Keith laughs breathlessly. “Sweet-talker.”

Shiro puts a hand to his cheek, then leans down and kisses him, the lightest touch of lips on lips. It’s not their first, not after this weekend, but it still feels like it is. Keith latches onto him, pressing harder and drowning in the sensation.

After they part, Keith rests his head on Shiro’s chest to get his breath back.

Shiro presses his lips to Keith’s hair. “Imagine kissing in space.”

“That’d be pretty cool,” Keith admits. “But I’m not sure that’s worth having to be roommates with six other really nosy people.”

“I’m sure everyone will do their best to make sure we can coexist peacefully,” Shiro says. His hand falls to Keith’s shoulder, and Keith blinks at the sudden solemnity in his expression. “I promise to keep it down while I’m jerking it.”

Keith’s jaw drops. He can’t trust anyone anymore. He turns around and walks away.

The smile in Shiro’s voice is huge when he calls out, “Too soon?”

“I fucking hate you!” Keith yells back.

Shiro’s laughter follows him all the way down the hallway.

**Author's Note:**

> thank you so much for reading! ♥
> 
> come say hello!  
> [twitter](https://twitter.com/ailurea) // [pillowfort](https://www.pillowfort.social/ailurea)


End file.
